Sedona News – As part of the Museum’s year-long 2023 celebration of their own milestone of 25 years since opening, they’ll honor Sedona Schnebly, our town’s namesake, by celebrating her 146th birthday on Friday February 24th. The celebration begins at 11 a.m. with birthday cake for visitors until the cake is gone and continues with free admission all day for residents of the Verde Valley who present I.D. proving local residency. Local residents are defined as anyone living in the Verde Valley (Sedona, Cottonwood, Jerome, Clarkdale, McGuireville, Rimrock, Camp Verde, Beaver Creek, Lake Montezuma, Page Springs, Cornville, etc.) and can show a driver’s license or other I.D. with their Verde Valley address.
Schnebly’s great-granddaughter, Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, will be present to cut the first pieces of cake and stay around to meet and greet visitors and sign copies of her book “The Journal of Sedona Schnebly.” The book is a composite of family history and correspondence woven into a diary style memoir.
Born in 1877 to an upper middle-class lifestyle, Sedona Arabella Miller followed her heart against her parents’ wishes when she married Theodore Carlton Schnebly at age 20. Four years later, he moved his wife and two small children to Arizona Territory and a place with no name. When he applied to operate a post office from their new home, he submitted his wife’s name as the name for the new postal stop, and the rest is history.
The Museum recently created a new exhibit honoring the Schneblys and telling their history and the story of Sedona’s first post office and naming.
Regular admission is $7/adults; children 12 and under are always free.
The Sedona Heritage Museum is in Jordan Historical Park at 735 Jordan Rd. in Uptown Sedona, AZ. For more information, call 928-282-7038.